Creaking, Growling: Feminine Noisiness and Vocal Fry in the Music of Joan La Barbara and Runhild Gammelsæter

Creaking, Growling: feminine noisiness and vocal fry in the music of !Joan La Barbara and Runhild Gammelsæter Marie Thompson, N.Paradoxa Vol.37, pp.5-11. In recent years, much media attention has been paid to the phenomenon of vocal fry– a creaking, growling affectation that occurs when the voice is in its lowest register. Vocal fry has been understood as a specifically feminine affliction. This “irritating” mannerism is characterised as infecting the speech patterns of young Anglophone women. Yet vocal fry is neither new nor gender specific. Indeed, it has long been used in music as a means of aiding expressivity and generating unusual vocal sonorities. In this article, I interrogate the phenomenon of vocal fry and its use as a musical resource. It is important to note that there are various definitions of vocal fry: it can pertain to a particular vocal register, effect or both; how it is defined colloquially (i.e. with reference to its perceptual qualities) differs from how it is defined in linguistics and phonetics (i.e. as a physiological and acoustic phenomenon). I primarily refer to the former definition, that is, vocal fry as it pertains to a set of perceptual characteristics. I argue that vocal fry, as it has been characterised in recent accounts by feminist and media commentators, connects to a historical lineage of “feminised” noise. In Eurocentric cultures, feminine vocal qualities and speech have long been admonished as “noisy” – that is, unwanted, irritating, meaningless and damaging. I then turn to vocal fry’s use in music. I begin with its utilisation as an extended vocal technique in experimental and contemporary music, as is the case in the vocal work of singer and composer Joan La Barbara. Yet vocal fry has also been used outside of this musical sphere: many of the generic vocal styles of metal, for example, derive from vocal fry. I consider the solo work of vocalist Runhild Gammelsæter, which connects the sound-worlds of metal and experimental music. I suggest that La Barbara and Gammelsæter can be heard to take the sonorous qualities associated with vocal fry to an extreme: La Barbara extends the creak, whilst Gammelsæter extends the growl. Vocal fry and feminine noise In July 2015, Naomi Wolf, writing in The Guardian, called for young women to ‘give up the vocal fry’ and reclaim their ‘strong female voice’.1 Vocal fry is a common feature of what Wolf identifies as contemporary young women’s ‘destructive vocal patterns’. Typically appearing at the end of words and the beginning and end of sentences, vocal fry is largely associated with female voices prominent in contemporary American popular culture: Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry and Zooey Deschanel are cited as exemplary users of this speech mannerism. Wolf claims that vocal fry, as well as sentence run-ons, breathiness and ‘uptalk’ undermines women’s authority: it is associated with hesitancy and a lack of confidence. In addition, those in positions of power tend to find these vocal traits a source of irritation: ‘many devoted professors, employers who wish to move young women up the ranks and business owners who just want to evaluate personnel on their merits flinch over the speech patterns of today’s young women.’2 Consequently, Wolf characterises vocal fry as a problem that needs overcoming. She argues that young women need to stop disowning their power and need to learn to speak in a manner that enables their voices to be taken seriously. Wolf’s article is one of a number of recent pieces that criticise women – specifically young American women – for their use of vocal fry. On a ‘Lexicon Valley’ podcast for Slate, journalist, commentator and NPR presenter Bob Garfield described ‘creaky voice’ – ‘the new voice of the young, urban, upwardly mobile woman’ as ‘repulsive’, ‘vulgar’ and a ‘mindless affectation’.3 In an interview for NPR, actor Lake Bell states that she is ‘personally ruptured and unsettled’ by the unsavoury ‘pandemic’ of vocal fry and uptalk.4 The actor and presenter Faith Salie on CBS’ ‘Sunday News’ says that she is ‘dismayed’ by the ‘annoying’ phenomenon, claiming that it makes users sound ‘underwhelmed’ and ‘disengaged’: ‘it’s annoying to listen to a young woman who sounds world weary. And exactly like her fourteen beeeest freeeeinds’.5 In The Huffington Post, presentation coach Michelle Hakala-Wolf warns that vocal fry ‘can be difficult to listen to and damaging to your vocal chords’. It can ‘make you sound young and inexperienced even if you are the expert in your field’.6 Indeed, a study by Anderson et al. that gained much media coverage suggests that young American women who spoke in the vocal fry range are less likely to be hired by employers as they are perceived as less educated, competent, trustworthy or attractive. The study concludes that young American women should avoid using vocal fry speech in order to maximise their job market opportunities.7 A number of scholars and media commentators have responded to these admonishments of vocal fry and its users, pointing out that these accounts are demeaning, inaccurate and fundamentally lacking in evidence. In an open letter to Naomi Wolf, feminist linguist Deborah Cameron asserts that ‘what is really destructive and undermining to women is the constant criticism to which their speech is subjected.’ For Cameron, the problem is not with how young women speak but is in the ear of the beholder: ‘Teaching young women to accommodate to the linguistic preferences, A.K.A. prejudices, of the men who run law firms and engineering companies is doing the patriarchy’s work for it. It’s accepting that there’s a problem with women’s speech, rather than a problem with sexist attitudes to women’s speech.’8 Cameron also notes that though it is often characterised as such, in practice, vocal fry is not a gender specific phenomenon. For instance, fry is understood to be a component of the speech of upper-class Englishmen, insofar as speakers of Received Pronunciation often use ‘creaky voice’.9 Likewise, contra characterisations of vocal fry as an exclusively female phenomenon, the linguist Mark Liberman has produced a waveform analysis of the voice of Bruce Willis, showing the prevalence of ‘creak’ and ‘fry’ in his speaking voice. He also notes the lack of non-anecdotal evidence to support the claim that young women use vocal fry more than others – be they older women, men or women in earlier decades. It might be, then, that the perception of vocal fry as significantly more prevalent amongst young women is due to ‘stereotype formation and confirmation bias’.10 Indeed, Anderson et al.’s aforementioned study, which examines perceptions of vocal fry in the workplace, found that both male and female voices featuring vocal fry were perceived negatively by comparison to voices without fry; however, female voices featuring vocal fry were perceived more negatively by comparison to male voices featuring vocal fry. In other words, the study suggests that although both men and women use vocal fry, the latter are judged more harshly for it. Although vocal fry is not gender specific, some have postulated that women are its pioneers and the affectation is the latest marker of feminine vocal innovation. Gabriel Arana, for example, considers ‘creaky voice’ to be yet another example of the linguistic ingenuity of young women. Arana argues that for linguists, “NORMs” – ‘non- mobile, older, rural males typically exemplify where language has been, whilst young urban women point to where language is going’.11 Arana’s account exemplifies the depiction of vocal fry as a recent phenomenon. Yet though it may have become more prevalent in contemporary speech, it is not a new mannerism. As Mike Vuolo asserts, vocal fry is prone to the “recency illusion” – the crackling and creaking vocal delivery of Mae West’s notorious quip ‘why don’t you come up sometime and see me?’ in She Done Him Wrong (1933) demonstrates that the phenomenon by no means originates with the idols of 21st century pop culture.12 Vocal fry can be understood of as part of historical lineage of feminine or “feminised” noises. Though neither new nor gender specific, it is the latest of a variety of vocal sounds, styles and practices to be deemed both feminine and “noisy”. In Eurocentric cultures, this association has a long history. As Anne Carson notes, ‘putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day. Its chief tactic is the ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death.’13 The Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, considered women’s high-pitched voice to be evidence of her evil disposition, insofar as noble creatures have large and deep voices.14 The negative connotations of feminine, high- pitched voices continue into modernity, though this is not to suggest that sonic stereotypes of feminine voices are ahistorical or static. In her discourse analysis of accounts of gender inequality in British radio broadcasting, for instance, Rosalind Gill exemplifies how women’s voices have been dismissed as ‘unsuitable’ for radio: they are deemed ‘too shrill’, ‘too high’ and ‘grating’. Broadcasters have justified the marginalisation of women’s voices on the grounds that they risk irritating radio listeners in that they depart from the ‘norm’ of the low, male voice. 15 In addition to cultural admonishments of feminine vocal qualities, the content and quantity of feminine speech and conversation has also been dismissed as unwelcome, meaningless and unimportant. Indeed, Carson asserts that historically, high vocal pitch has been coupled with talkativeness ‘to characterize a person who is deviant from or deficient in the masculine ideal of self-control.’16 Gossip, for instance, is typically construed as a feminine tendency and devalued as an illegitimate, informal and ‘improper’ mode of communication.

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